I'm going to pre-make a few things for a big family vacation and I'd love some advice.
1) I'm making the Sous Vide BBQ pulled pork from Serious Eats. For the sake of ease, I'm thinking I'll do the full cook at home and then shred and vacuum seal with a little sauce, reheating in the sous vide for big dinner. Any reason I shouldn't pre-shred?
2) I'd like to make the Classic Chicken Salad from Serious Eats and make the chicken in advance. Has anyone made this? I'm wondering if there is a downside to making the chicken 3 days in advance and storing chilled in the bags, then cubing for sandwiches and adding the mayo blend the day of. Alternately, doing the cook process, deboning and cubing and then vacuum sealing. Kenji made no mention of doing an advance cook on this recipe.
3) Has anyone reheated frozen taco meat in the sous vide? Recommend or nah? I'm truly trying to prepare as much as possible to make it as easy as possible to feed 20 people on vacation, while trying to be on vacation myself!
by RiverMarketEagle
2 Comments
Great ideas.
1. Have cooked pulled pork/ shredded/ sealed and frozen. Heats up just fine. If you are taking the SV unit just drop the bags in a pot of water and run at 140-150ish for an hour. Or microwave in the bag works well.
2. Have also SV chicken for chicken salad and have made more chicken than needed. Frozen then thawed works really well. No reason to not cube it for ease. You can freeze it and then drop in a pot of cool water to thaw.
SV chicken salad is SO moist. You’ll love it.
3. Haven’t done taco meat but have made meatballs/cooked/vac sealed/frozen/ reheated. Worked well. No reason to believe ground beef would be different.
Enjoy the vacation.
1. No, there’s no reason you shouldn’t pre-shred. But since it’ll have been opened post-cook, to be safe you’ll want to reheat to 160°.
2. No, so long as stays sealed and kept cold, you should be fine. (Depending on how you’re transporting it, you might even consider freezing them.) No matter what Kenji says, I think you should consider boneless/skinless to make life easier at your destination.
3. Sous vide or just boil (simmer)-in-bag, it works either way. You can even microwave it if you snip a corner off the bag first. (I’ve done all three with no problems whatsoever.) Again, keep the danger zone in mind during your prep. You might need to heat to 160° for safety. You also might want to dump it into a serving bowl after heating as the bags can be hard to get the meat out of.
The big thing with 1. and 3. will be not to make your bags too big/thick, both of which will increase heating time. I’d keep it to 2(ish) lbs per bag and max thickness of an inch or less. Remember to leave room for water circulation during reheating.